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Australian data retention plans are going too far

When we think of Australia, we envisage miles of golden sandy beaches, the Sydney Opera House, kangaroos, Kylie Minogue and maybe a didgeridoo. We don’t tend to associate Australia as a country with excessive laws giving huge amounts of power to spy agencies to be able to snoop on the lives of its netizens. But that is exactly what is happening.

Last month a bill was introduced that would give the nation’s spy agency, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) the permission to monitor all internet activity and store user data for two years, with only one warrant.

Now, the Australian government are looking to introduce a mandatory data retention bill that will, if passed, mean that Australian ISPs will be required to gather personal information about their customers. According to Australian consumer advocacy group Choice, personal information such as “current as well as historical identification of the source and destination of services; subscriber account name, device, billing, payment and contact information; time, date and direction of communications, type of service as well as equipment and location.” could be retained.

A campaign Stop the Spies was launched October 6 to block this mandatory data retention law. The aim of the campaign is to expose this bill and to actively encourage Australians to voice their concerns to their government. Even if this doesn’t directly affect you, you may have Australian friends or family who will be affected by this new bill. The more people who speak up against this Draconian move, the better. We can’t let yet another government masquerade under the guise of fighting terrorism. There are already too many countries that believe it’s their right to be able to monitor what people get up to online, and we certainly don't want to see Australia added to a list of dictatorship-lead countries such as those under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey and Kim Jong-un of North Korea.

As more countries are moving towards censoring information they can access and monitor what people get up to online, more people are asking “How can I hide my IP address” to stop governments and other third parties from eavesdropping into their online lives. There is one way that you can block ISPs from snooping on your online activity and that’s by using HMA! Pro VPN - of course you knew that was coming! But in all seriousness, a VPN (Virtual Private Network) can thwart any attempt by a government, hacker or third party from ‘listening’ into your online world. Once you connect to any one of our VPN servers, all your internet activity, including your surfing activity, communications, personal and confidential information is sent through an encrypted VPN tunnel. All your data is securely hidden behind one of our IP addresses. Your ISP cannot see what you get to online - nobody can.

We all need to stand up and fight against such intrusive and dictatorially-lead governments who think it’s their right to be able to snoop into our private lives. If we don’t, it’s yet another blow to dwindling online privacy.

The mandatory data bill heads into federal parliament on Monday 27 October - act now and have your voice heard.